professional courtesy

I was fuming this evening, and the rest of the residents were tickled. They think it’s a joke, to see how much strong language I’ll use when I get upset. So far I only go in for colorful epithets; they’re waiting to catch some dirty words, which makes it dangerous to get angry around them.

One of the critical care consultants is driving me crazy. He interferes with my patients, and he shouldn’t, and I haven’t quite got up the nerve to tell off an attending from another specialty (and I rather doubt that it would do any good if I did; he strikes me as being very good at looking down his nose at anyone who tried it).

The last time I had to deal with medical consultants trying to manage critical surgical patients was in the burn unit last fall, and then at least I could tell myself that I knew nothing about critical care but what I was picking up from the nurses (if they reported something to me from overnight, I knew they considered that important, and I should pay attention), so I couldn’t possibly presume to criticize the medical folks. Now, admittedly, I am far behind a board-certified critical care specialist, but I do know more than I did then. I also think that spending a month learning to think like the most finicky doctor I have ever met, one of the trauma doctors who will spend an hour making sure that every single thing is perfect for one patient, has taught me something.

So, I (and my chief) object tremendously when this particular consultant (the rest of his group does it too, but he’s an egregious offender) tries to take over the entire management of a surgical patient whom he was consulted on either for vent management, or as a courtesy because the patient is in the ICU.

Today, without talking to anyone from the surgical service, he sat down with the family of a patient he’d met yesterday, and told them the patient was essentially brain-dead, and they ought to withdraw care, basically now. Then he ran into me inside the unit (I had just come up to have a similar, but perhaps more gradual and gentle, conversation), told me flatly that he’d told the family care was futile, and he expected “we will end up withdrawing before too long.” I was furious; I think there was smoke coming out of my ears. That’s my patient. I spent a month taking care of him, nursing him along, watching him slide out of my reach; I was heartbroken when I came back one morning and found him on death’s door in the ICU. I have talked to his daughter every day for a month. I know him; I know his family. He’s mine; or at least he’s my attending’s. This jerk met the whole group yesterday in the middle of a disaster; who does he think he is, to go telling them things like that, without talking to us? My attending or I should be the ones to say, We’re sorry, we failed, we couldn’t save him, he’s going to die, it’s best if you let him go. (And he’s not brain-dead; he’s not good, he’s not conscious, but he’s not brain-dead. I really hate it when consultants, usually critical care or neurology, try to call my patients brain-dead when they’re not.)

Grrr. I think next time I meet the guy doing things with my patients, I might say something; hopefully (in that grand British phrase) more in sorrow than in anger: “I’ve known this guy for a month, I’m really upset by his condition, and I feel like it would be more appropriate for someone like me or my attending, who have a rather longterm relationship with the family, to be the ones to break this news and discuss this situation with them. Now git!”